Last week, we feared the worst. We feared that IDC - in a bid to tout Itanium for customers HP and Intel - had completely ignored the major issues facing the chip in the coming years. We feared that IDC's latest forecast for the server marketplace had once again missed the mark, continuing an ignominous seven-year tradition.

Avecho.com, the controversial UK anti-virus service, is to cease operating on March 17. Avecho Group slipped into administration on December 2, barely three years after the business was founded, but its flagship email filtering service continues after the business was sold to Stylish Limited (a new firm) for an undisclosed amount.

Geek TVMixed fortunes this week for unshaven Amstrad boss Alan Sugar. The good news is that his wildly compelling BBC2 show The Apprentice - an X Factor for people who use the phrase "at the end of the day" without feeling embarrassed - slaughtered all rivals in the TV ratings.

The controversial Data Retention Directive received its final seal of approval on Tuesday, when ministers at the Justice and Home Affairs Council adopted the directive with a qualified majority. Irish and Slovak Ministers voted against the measure.

Netgear will next quarter ship network adaptors capable of transmitting information at up to 200Mbps through home-installed mains power cables, the company said this week. The units, which are based on chips developed by Design of Systems on Silicon (DS2), mark a big leap forward for powerline networking technology which currently offers a maximum throughput of 85Mbps.

An Indian professor of organic chemistry was denied a visa by US immigration. Goverdhan Mehta, 62, was hoping to attend a scientific conference in Florida, but was denied permission by the embassy in New Dehli.

Michael Durant is taking on the UK Government in the next instalment of his ground-breaking data protection battle. His next venue is the European Court of Human Rights, following defeats in a County Court, the Court of Appeals and the House of Lords.

Rambus has persuaded a US District Court judge to make public documents it believes provide evidence that a number of memory makers conspired against it. Separately, a new front was opened in the company's war with Micron, with a lawsuit being filed in the Italian court.

And ninthlyWe will add that the working class in the United States, because of its high standard of living, does not clearly see the contradictions existing in US society. To the US working class, these contradictions, which are blunted, appear incomprehensible and they cannot gain clear consciousness of their own exploitation as long as they continue to get the crumbs that US imperialism tosses to them from the feast - Ernesto Che Guevara

California Democrats have introduced legislation to the state assembly tightening the rules on the manufacture and disposal of toxic substances used in electronics. Super-hazardous heavy metals like mercury, cadmium, lead and chromium would be covered by regulations that would come into force in 2008, if passed.

Lenovo yesterday introduced the first of its own-brand notebook and desktop PCs to be offered globally. The move comes as market watcher iSuppli said the company had become the world's third-largest PC maker, behind Dell and HP.

It looks a bit like a dustbin - or maybe one of R2-D2's ancestors - but South Korean manufacturer DVICO's TVix M-5000U is a full media player equipped with 64MB of RAM, a 3.5in hard drive and the ability to pump out pictures at up to 1920 x 1080i HD resolution.

There's always one, isn't there? As the world teeters on the brink of avian apocalypse, some eBay bright spark has decided to cash in on bird flu frenzy by offering the following tasty UK licence plate:

The J2SE 5.0 release of Java introduced many new language features, one of which is called annotations. At the time I noted their presence, but did not feel particularly excited about their appearance. Now that a little water has flowed under the bridge, I think it is time to revisit Java Annotations.

NetEventsMonday will see a big shot in the arm for the "old guard" of telecoms, as the great white hope of the legacy services, IP Multimedia System (IMS), gets its chance to prove it might actually work.

Thus's acquisition of Your Communications has been approved by shareholders, the Scottish telco confirmed today. As a result of the thumbs up, the acquisition of Your Communications from United Utilities is expected to done and dusted on 26 February.

3Dlabs is to turn away from workstation-oriented graphics cards and steer itself toward the mobile graphics arena, the company's parent, Creative Technology, said today. The move will be accompanied by the loss of 100 jobs.

LettersA very special welcome this Friday to all our Australian readers who, as we recently reported were favoured by Microsoft with a special Commonwealth Games daylight saving time patch - or something like that. Suffice it to say, we thought this was a pretty straighforward matter. No so:

Let's face it, they don't mess around in Colombia. To add to the many hazards of life in that sun-kissed paradise - including kidnap, death by coke-dealing guerillas, or getting shot by enraged footie fans (ok, that only applies to World Cup squad defenders, but still...) - is the very real possibility that a moment of macho madness might earn you an extended spell in chokey.